Sleepless
by HlysComment
Summary: Those involved deal with the events of 'Soul Train'. *Spoilers for Season 1: Episode 5 "Soul Train"
1. Charlie

Charlie peeked in through the train car window, just a fast glance. Neville's back was to her. She dared a longer look. There he was. Danny! Her mind flashed to the bank vault and the bloody rag. His face was turned away but her eyes raked over every inch of exposed skin for signs of trauma.

She exhaled slowly. Only bruises. She'd seen him take much more punishment due to falls and other accidents but somehow the idea that someone had done this to him made her stomach churn. How could someone hurt Danny? He was the sweetest kid in the world.

_Look this way, Danny._ Charlie mentally urged. _C'mon! Look this way!_

Finally, Danny shifted in his seat, glanced around the compartment and caught Charlie's eyes. Eyes that suddenly misted with unwelcome tears when he smiled at her.

For a brief second they were together again. The man in the uniform didn't matter. The gun he carried. The train full of militia. Nora's bomb. It was all swept from Charlie's mind because Danny was okay.

He gave a meaningful look at Neville and Charlie got the message. The man started to turn and suddenly Danny was on him.

Charlie grabbed the door handle and pushed forward.

Nothing happened.

No. This couldn't be. She twisted the handle again, harder. She banged on the door, then realized it was a waste. This wasn't some ancient wooden house door on a rotting frame it was steel.

_Think, think, think!_

She looked in the compartment again. Danny was down. The monster who'd taken her father away, who'd sent Maggie on the journey that'd cost her life, the man who'd taken everything Charlie had left was pounding on her brother's face without mercy.

_Attack at the weakest point._

She smashed the handle again and again.

_Break!_ She willed the metal. _Please break!_

But the metal held. As she pounded futilely she watched her brother continue to grapple with the larger, more experienced and infinitely more ruthless older man. Danny managed to get his hands on the sidearm. Hope flared in Charlie's heart and she continued to bang away at the handle. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe Danny could take care of himself.

She watched helplessly as her brother fought to keep hold of the gun, to point it in the direction of his attacker as she banged and kicked the handle in turns.

The sound of the gunshot, even through the door caused a tinny ringing in her ears and she stopped hacking away at the handle.

The two bodies lay in the aisle, Neville's atop Danny's. Charlie couldn't breathe.

Then, to her horror, Neville started to rise. He stood clear and Charlie could see. Danny lay unnaturally still. His eyes stared at nothing. His chest was a mess of bone, sinew and blood and no longer rose and fell.

Charlie tried to back away, shaking her head violently.

No. It couldn't be.

Danny was all she had left. Her mind flashed through images; Danny curled up next to her crying quietly so as not to wake their Dad but sharing her heartbreak over their Mother's departure. Danny's first archery lesson and the red welt he'd gotten across his face when he'd somehow let loose the bow and not the arrow. All the many times she'd held his head up and kept him calm during an asthma attack and how brave he always was. Danny'd faced death countless times and always managed to keep it together and keep breathing. How she admired him. Staying calm and slowly trying to ease each strained breath in and out. He'd always won. He'd always lived.

How could he be dead?

No.

"Danny!" She screamed and found she couldn't stop. It couldn't be true. If she screamed loud enough he would wake up and smile at how silly she was for being so upset. "Danny! Danny please!"

"Charlie!"

Miles was shaking her but she couldn't register it. She fought him off, still sobbing.

"Danny?" She cried.

"It was a dream." Miles said, but he couldn't meet her eyes.

Charlie was suddenly embarrassed. She couldn't cry.

She couldn't be weak in front of these ruthless people. If they didn't respect her, they might abandon her.

"Yeah, Miles." She barked, but softly, hoping maybe the others were still asleep. "I kinda figured that out."

There was an awkward pause before Miles piped up again.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." Charlie said, her head already back on her pack, she turned her back to him.

"You know, if you need to talk…I'm not very good at talking but I'm a good listener. I mean, I was a bartender after all."

He was trying to be nice. But she couldn't take nice right now. If he was too nice to her she'd break and she'd lose everything.

"What I need is sleep." She said.

She heard him sigh heavily and then the sounds of him settling back down. Time passed and she thought he must be asleep though she doubted she'd be able to rest again that night.

"He's still alive, Charlie." His voice broke into the darkness, startling her. "As long as he's alive, there's hope. We will find him. I promise."

She hesitated for a minute but then answered him, "Thanks, Miles."

"Yeah," He said and seemed suddenly uncomfortable. "Go back to sleep."

And to Charlie's amazement, she was soon doing just that.


	2. Nora

Nora couldn't sleep. Every time she thought she might finally drift off, the pain would blaze and she would once again be alert, ready to fight. So, she was pretty sure that she was the first to notice Charlie's nightmare.

She'd been leaning toward drifting when she'd heard a pitiful whimper and had tried to twist in the direction of the sound. That had been a mistake. The pain seared through her abdomen almost as though the knife were ripping through her guts all over again and she suddenly added her own whimper like a horrid echo.

She concentrated on being still and letting the waves of anguish pass over her. _Pain is just another sensation._ She repeated the old mantra. _It will pass. Let it pass. Be still and let it pass._ She breathed slowly and with as much calm as she could manage till the sharp bite of the pain had dulled back down to a more manageable throb. By then Charlie was screaming the boy's name.

She listened to the brisk conversation. She heard the fear and pain the girl was trying to hide behind gruff words. Then the silence and Nora settled back into the waves of pain and exhaustion that seemed as constant as the tide.

When Miles finally spoke again she almost betrayed her wakeful state by gasping. She listened as he reassured Charlie and made promises. It struck her that she believed him. Miles really was going to do everything he could to find that boy and Miles could do a lot.

Could this be it? Could this be the thing that finally spurred Miles into action? How many times had she struggled with the ineffective leadership of the rebellion and wished that Miles could shake off his despair and apathy and join the fight? With a leader like Miles Matheson there would be real hope of victory. After all, he'd built the damn republic. If anyone was going to take it down, he had the best chance, right? It'd have to wait until he'd found his nephew though…

Nora's train of thought plowed into her gut as painfully as the knife had yesterday.

What had she become?

_Nora, you in or are you going to try to kill my brother again?_

The words had cut deep because they were true. She'd been willing, only for a moment, but for that moment she had been willing to kill an innocent young boy to stop a piece of metal. Enemy combatants were one thing, you killed them or they killed you. This boy was an innocent, no, he was a victim. He was blood kin to her companions, people she'd risked all with.

When helping her rebel friends had stood in the way of finding her brother, Charlie had chosen to stay and help. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. It was the human thing to do. Faced with an even less difficult question Nora's answer was…well, it was the kind of answer she'd expect from the Militia.

_If you become the enemy you fight, you have already lost._

Nora closed her eyes against the truth of what she'd almost done and of the consequences going through with it might have had but it didn't work. She saw again the boy…_Danny, his name is Danny._ She scolded inwardly. _Stop treating him like a thing and call him by his name._ She saw Danny in the train car again. At first he was just a flash of golden hair but then he'd turned and she'd glimpsed bits and pieces of blue eyes and a bruised face.

This was why she was fighting wasn't it? To protect boys like this? All the children left orphaned or conscripted or forced to starve slowly when the Malitia took their food?

Nora sighed slowly, careful not to upset the delicate balance that had finally seemed to settle her mid-section.

Yes, she believed Miles would find Danny. She believed if anyone could manage to free a fugitive from the midst of Monroe's stronghold, that person would be Miles Matheson. She believed that Charlie's spirit and Miles' growing love for her could hold him to that promise.

It was funny. Nora was cut off from her allies, wounded badly and about to attempt a rescue against ridiculous odds and she felt more confident and secure than she had in years.

She smiled and before the pain could manage to interject, she finally fell asleep.


	3. Aaron

**I had planned to somewhat skip over Aaron as a sort of joke and make him the only one who didn't wake up but someone sent a review asking that he be next and it got me thinking. Why is Aaron with them? He's the teacher of his village so he would have spent a lot of time with both Charlie and Danny as kids, right? He doesn't have any family around, maybe he's sort of latched onto their familial unit to a certain extent. Lots of wheels got spinning and this is what came out. I hope the reviewer who asked for him to be next is pleased.**

* * *

Aaron didn't wake up until Charlie was screaming. He tried to scramble up but the blankets seemed tangled around him. By the time he had worked his way clear Miles had already awaken her.

He listened to her shake off the dream and Miles' help. It struck him as typical Charlie. He remembered when he'd first met her; she was already distant at only 12 years old. He couldn't imagine. By the time he met her she'd seen men dead, lost her mother, and from what he understood had even watched a man die at her mother's hands. She didn't seem particularly jaded though. She wasn't without hope, she was without trust.

He couldn't blame her. What exactly in that little girl's life had proven trust worthy? The world had turned on its head. Everything she'd relied upon and trusted had failed her. Her mother had disappeared. What was there left to hold on to?

Danny maybe?

Aaron almost smiled before he remembered where he was and what they were doing.

If Charlie'd been guarded, Danny'd been the opposite and Danny's openness was due to Charlie. Charlie never left that boy's side. If he couldn't trust anything else, he could trust that Charlie would take care of him. What a difference that had made. Danny wasn't innocent, but he wasn't guarded either. What was it Aaron had first said to the boy as his bedraggled family had marched into their little haven? He couldn't remember. He just remembered that they had all looked so tired; body and soul. And Charlie wouldn't let go of Danny's hand.

Danny hadn't been fooled. In fact, he'd given Aaron a look he almost swore was of patient toleration. There was a spark in that kid. Aaron had seen more and more of it when the two had joined his makeshift school. Charlie tolerated the classes because she was smart enough to recognize that skipping or venting her frustration by acting out wasn't worth the time outs and groundings that were the consequence. Danny had loved school.

Aaron seemed to have found a kindred spirit. Danny was curious about any and every subject you put in front of him, even Maggie's medicine. He had to tread carefully, of course. Asthma was especially scary in this new world without albuterol. And there was precious little they could do to help Danny when he had an attack. It had been awful to stand by and watch his little chest convulsing, his lips and fingers turning purple and in some very scary attacks blue. The kid couldn't breathe but all they could do was urge him to stay calm. If he gave into the fear and panicked, if he took the desperate breaths he was dying to take, his lungs would become even more inflamed. Danny was bred to take pain patiently, to stay calm and wait to breathe. If anyone was going to make it through it would be Danny, right?

In a way though, it had helped shape them too, hadn't it? They had been trained to keep patient watch over Danny but never give up hope. Now they stalked him patiently, equally determined to never let him go.

Aaron's hand reached for the strange necklace in his pocket. How did it work? How could he begin to understand how it undid what had happened to the world when he didn't even know what had happened in the first place? It didn't make sense! Why was it that steam engines, explosives and guns still worked but combustion engines didn't? How was it you could still get a shock walking across a rug but batteries stopped working? How was it the electrical impulses that allowed thought and function in human brains still existed? For the lights to go off was a simple matter. All it would take was an electromagnetic pulse but that wouldn't keep the power off; and good luck finding a pulse massive enough to take out the entire world all at once.

Aaron had clung to hope for a long time; the hope that the rest of the world still functioned and any day the planes or the boats would arrive. But no one ever came. They were all in this together, all equally screwed.

Aaron stopped fiddling with the pendant and shifted in his cumbersome blankets.

Maggie's face flashed before his closed eyes. The sensation of reaching into her and gripping the rubbery yet delicate texture of the artery he'd desperately sewn together. He'd lost her. Just like he'd lost his wife.

Danny was a prisoner deep in enemy territory and Aaron was traipsing into the lion's den with a girl who was crazed with grief, a war criminal and a rebel who seemed more attached to her dogma than human life.

That made about as much sense as the lights going out. He smiled thinking; _I guess that means it makes sense in this weird backwards version of the world._

Surprisingly, the thought gave him comfort and before he knew it, he'd finally fallen back to sleep.


	4. Miles

Miles hadn't been sleeping. It was a soldier's gift to be able to sleep in almost any conditions. Somewhere along the line your body reprogrammed itself to take what it could when it could despite your mental state because in a war zone there was always going to be something worrying away at you.

No, Miles wasn't kept from sleep involuntarily. He stayed awake as a precaution. They were too close to the Monroe outpost. Charlie, thankfully, had been fired up for walking after the blow of having Danny slip through her fingers which was nice. He'd geared himself up for a huge time-sink convincing her to shake it off and keep going. No question the girl needed to toughed up and yet…

It kind of made him sick to do it. He had said the fun Uncle was dead and then had to take it back. He'd lied to keep them going, to stop that little girl from dwelling anymore on the past when the future was what they needed to worry about now. But the truth was, he remembered that little girl. He'd looked forward to being the crazy Uncle. He'd even had vague visions of semi-kidnapping her to take her to her graduation in style, on the back of a motorcycle. That was the kind of uncle Miles had wanted to be. And that uncle was far from dead.

So many lies. He'd told Bass that he was out to find his brother to find out what was going on but that was another lie. He just wanted to make sure his little brother, his only family, was okay. The truth was, even though he was the older brother, he'd needed Ben not the other way around. Ben was solid, reliable and smart. When the world went crazy, Miles wanted his brother.

But that hadn't exactly worked out had it? Miles had seen a messed up situation on that journey to find his brother. He'd tried to fix it and he'd made it worse. Now Nora wanted him to fix things but that was how all of this began. Miles didn't make things better, he made them worse. It was better for everyone if kept out of it.

But Charlie needed him. Danny needed him. He wasn't trying to solve the world's problems anymore and if he just stuck to family, to getting that kid back, surely he couldn't screw anything up just doing that, right? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he should leave. They were all asleep. It'd be so easy.

Then Charlie'd called out in her sleep. Calling for her brother and Miles was pretty sure what kind of dream she was having.

He went to wake her.

"Danny?"

Miles' gut twisted.

"It was a dream."

For a moment she was vulnerable, on the edge of tears. He could see the desperation in her eyes. He recognized it from all those nights on the road when he'd been desperately trying to find his own brother. Then the wall went up and he recognized that too.

"Yeah, Miles. I kind of figured that out."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

She rolled over, her back to him. _Don't do that, Charlie. Don't push everyone away. _

He had a reason to keep his distance. He destroyed everything he touched but Charlie somehow managed to make him better or at least start to think maybe he could be better. Charlie didn't need to keep her distance from people. Charlie made things better.

"You know, if you need to talk…I'm not very good at talking but I'm a good listener. I mean, I was a bartender after all."

It had been the perfect job for him. The meticulous nature of crafting the booze had provided him a great distraction and free access to liquor. Plus, what harm could he do being a shoulder to cry on?

"What I need is sleep."

And there it was. Miles sighed and settled back into his reclined but alert position. He wondered how long this Charlie had been around and what had happened to the goofy little kid he'd known. Then he mentally kicked himself. What happened? The world ended. Everything got turned upside down and, let's see, she'd lost her mother. Miles knew best how that'd happened. Then she'd watched her Dad die and knowing Ben that loss would have been huge. She'd lost her brother, someone from whom she'd been inseparable. Now, she'd come close, so close, to getting him back just to have him slip away again. Yeah, maybe all of that had something to do with the tough cookie, take charge persona the kid was so desperate to exude. She was making it up as she went along and hoping none of them noticed.

The kid needed a break. For just a second she needed hope. But could he give it to her?

"He's still alive, Charlie." He said and heard her jerk. She must have thought he'd gone to sleep. "As long as he's alive, there's hope. We will find him. I promise." As soon as he said it the panic set in. The sudden desire to cut all ties and run but he suppressed the feeling. It finally occurred to him that he cared for Charlie. He cared for Danny and caring scared the shit out of him. It wasn't that he wanted to leave because he didn't care. He was desperate to run because caring for someone was the scariest damn thing a person could do.

"Thanks, Miles." Charlie said in reply and the edge was gone.

"Yeah," He said, suddenly frightened she might want him to say more. "Go back to sleep."

Soon she went back to the steady breathing of sleep. So did Nora and Mr. Tubbs. Bet those two had no idea he'd known they were awake.

Miles looked around him. Four people against the Monroe Militia. He shook his head. What was the saying? "Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better." Maybe if Miles tried to fix things he would fail again but with these crazy friends here by his side he was pretty sure he'd at least fail better. He smiled, crossed his arms and settled in for the rest of the night's vigil.


End file.
